Isaac Newton Biography

This is a short, easily read biography by James Gleick.  Most Newton bios would be pretty short because he was a very reclusive person most of his life.  His father died before he was born and his mother abandoned him as a young child to live with a second husband.  He was fortunate to have access to early education and people who encouraged the engagement of his intelligence.  He was an extreme loner, forming few friendships and spending most of his time engaged in pursuit of mathematics, alchemistry and rigorous explanations of physical phenomenon, like the relationships of the moon, Sun, Earth and other planets, the nature of light and what governed tides.  He was a solitary worker, who occasionally engaged in serious spats with other scholars.  Relatively late in life he published his major works and his genius came to be recognized.

He kept much of his work to himself for years.  He worked out many advanced mathematical approaches on his own but did not publish them for an extended time, leading to disputes, for example, over who developed what we now call calculus.  He is perhaps best known for conceptualizing what he called gravity and his work created substantial advances in understanding mass, force and other aspects of the world.  He created formulas for the effect of these forces.  His work on the nature of light was fascinating, as he grappled with whether it was particle or wave based, coming close to seeing that it could be both.

In addition to his specific contributions, he was the primary advocate for a new way of creating rigorous knowledge.  He knew that while generating a hypothesis might be important, gathering data and doing experiments were critical to establish that formal, math-based understanding of the world.   Newton helped create what we know think of as the modern approach to science.  Long after he died many of his papers and notes remained unknown and were slowly discovered, revealing how wide-ranging his interests and work had been.  A fascinating character, obviously a rare intelligence.